IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 
43 
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF BOTANY IN IOWA. 
BY THOMAS II. MACBRIDE. 
To tell of Botany in Iowa for twenty-five years, even as presented in the 
work of members of this Acadamy, is a task far more difficult than would at 
first appear. Shall I present a list of all Iowa botany papers for a quarter of a 
century; such list w’^ould mean much indeed, and such list so far as attainable 
may be found as an appendix to the present paper. But the slightest reflection 
suggests that such list, long or short, is, as a matter of fact, no measure what- 
ever of either the industry or the achievements of those who make up the 
botanical membership of this Academy. We have not, I believe, a professional 
botanist among us. We have doctors, druggists, bankers, gardeners, farmers, 
teachers, bht not a botanist in the sense of single-minded devotion — not an 
untrammelled student of Botany in Iowa! 
Perhaps there are not many in the country; there are some; but apart from 
gardeners the great majority of the men who work with plants at all study them 
with the duty of instruction ever dominant, determining the direction if not 
the extent of effort. Even the beginners of the study have, I suppose, in many 
instances been subjected to the same atmospheric environment. Young men 
in the past, as now, have prepared themselves to teach; not to study or even 
to understand — in the fine, wide sense of untrammelled comprehensive ap- 
preciation. This is America. The atmosphere of altruism pervades our entire 
social and educational life. Our great educational foundations are either mat- 
ters of private beneficence based on philanthropy, or they are provided each by 
a generous commonwealth seeking the common weal; regardful of science only 
as contributing to the happier living of great masses of men; employing 
teachers, therefore, not men of the closet and laboratory; at best experimenters, 
not theorizers, not specifically and solely seekers and lovers of the truth. 
I think I shall not here be misunderstood. In speaking of my beloved col- 
leagues I would not for a moment imply that w’e are not seekers after truth, 
or that we have not studied or followed science for science’s sake. Not one 
of us, I suppose, but has found pre-eminent satisfaction in the pure enjoyment 
of those rare visions which sometimes are ours by virtue of our more intimate 
knowledge of the living world; the unbounded, undiminished, heedless profligacy 
of life’s unfailing generations especially in the world of plants. Nor has any 
one of us failed to find somewhere, at least, a tiny field whose contents belong 
to him and to him alone; a face of nature turned for the first time in all the 
centuries full upon his enraptured vision. No; we know all of us the strange, 
compelling fascination of research and her exceeding great reward. But, un- 
fortunately, sadly for our personal joy, such is not the atmosphere in which 
we are usually called upon to move. Instead of such inspiration, perpetual 
note-books haunt our wearied vision; routine procedure fain would waste our 
hours; until I fear sometimes the steps of the tread-wheel show signs of wear, 
and the landscape, all unfreshened by new visions of new truths, begins to lose 
